* “An epiphany is a sudden realization of a significant event. At that special moment, a life meaning becomes clear to you —an insight into your personality, a discovery of something you value or believe in, an acute sense of where you are in life.
Here’s an Epiphany Tale one elder told to her family:
I must have been around seven or eight. It was summer, and we were visiting my aunt Clara up at Crystal Lake. I was alone, lying on my back by the banks of the lake, looking up at the sky, and I had my harmonica in my mouth. I was just breathing through it, in and out, not playing a melody, simply breathing. And suddenly, I was overcome with this wonderful feeling of connection to everything in the world. I’d say now it was a spiritual feeling. I listened to the sound my breathing made through that harmonica, and I thought, I am part of the noise of the world. I am part of everything . . . I’ve had that feeling again, from time to time, throughout my life — a certainty that I am part of the universe —but that was my first time. I think that knowledge is one reason I’ve never found the idea of dying very frightening.”
Your turn: Write about an epiphany you or your fictional character has had.
* Excerpt: From Family Tales, Family Wisdom — How to gather the stories of a lifetime and share them with your family, by Dr. Robert U. Akeret with Daniel Klein
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” — Theodore Roosevelt, from a speech given in Syracuse, New York (September 7, 1903) From Real Simple magazine, September 2014
